After declining to fight the execution in court, Norman Grim was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday evening at Florida State Prison for the 1998 sexual assault and murder of a woman in Santa Rosa County.
Grim, 65, was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m., becoming the 15th inmate executed in Florida this year — a modern-era record.
After death warrants are signed, attorneys for inmates usually file a flurry of legal arguments in state and federal courts to try to halt the executions. But during an Oct. 1 hearing in Santa Rosa County, Grim waived pursuing appeals.
Grim declined to make a final statement before the execution procedure started at 6:01 p.m. Tuesday. He could be initially seen breathing heavily and twitching, but the visible movement stopped by about 6:05 p.m.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sept. 26 signed a death warrant for Grim, who was convicted in the July 1998 murder of Cynthia Chapman, an attorney who was his neighbor in Santa Rosa County. Chapman’s body was found by fishermen in Pensacola Bay.
“She had suffered multiple blunt force injuries to her face and head consistent with hammer blows, and she was stabbed 11 times in the chest,” Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office said in a document filed with the death warrant at the Florida Supreme Court. ”Seven of the stab wounds penetrated the victim’s heart. Physical evidence, including DNA, tied Grim to Ms. Campbell’s murder.”
Grim woke up at 6 a.m. Tuesday and had a last meal of fried pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy, brussel sprouts, a chocolate milkshake, banana cream pie and a soda, Ted Veerman, communications director for the Florida Department of Corrections, said. Grim did not have any visitors Tuesday.
The execution continued a recent pace of Florida putting to death two inmates a month. It followed the Oct. 14 execution of Samuel Smithers, who was convicted of killing two women in 1996 in Hillsborough County and dumping their bodies in a pond.
The previous modern-era record for executions in a year was eight in 1984 and 2014. The modern era represents the time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling halted it.
While Grim did not fight his execution in court, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops urged DeSantis to commute Grim’s sentence to life in prison — as it has done with other inmates executed this year.
“We have the ability to keep society safe, to imprison somebody for life and incapacitate them,” Joseph Harmon, policy coordinator for the conference, said. “In this kind of situation, we should use that alternative punishment and not take the drastic and unnecessary step of ending another human life.”
DeSantis also has signed death warrants to execute Bryan Frederick Jennings on Nov. 13 and Richard Barry Randolph on Nov. 20. Jennings was convicted in the 1979 kidnapping, rape and murder of a 6-year-old girl in Brevard County, while Randolph was convicted in the 1988 rape and murder of a Putnam County convenience-store manager.
In addition to Smithers, inmates executed this year were Victor Jones on Sept. 30; David Pittman on Sept. 17; Curtis Windom on Aug. 28; Kayle Bates on Aug. 19; Edward Zakrzewski on July 31; Michael Bell on July 15; Thomas Gudinas on June 24; Anthony Wainwright on June 10; Glen Rogers on May 15; Jeffrey Hutchinson on May 1; Michael Tanzi on April 8; Edward James on March 20; and James Ford on Feb. 13.
–Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida
Bo Peep says
Way to go Ron. A little late but better late than never.